LTE and the Dawn of Tiered Pricing...Ugh

Leave it up to Verizon to be at the forefront of making your wireless data more expensive. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on Thursday, Verizon executives said they see the switch to LTE and 4G as a perfect time to introduce speed caps on data services.

This would be similar to what cable and DSL providers have been doing for a long time, although it wasn't completely clear whether in exchange for these speed caps - and obviously higher prices - would we see the end of caps in bandwidth.

Verizon may be leaning toward making higher bandwidth plans slower and lower bandwidth plans faster, however. "If you want to pay for less speed, you'll pay for less speed and consume more, or you can pay for high speed and consume less," chief financial officer Fran Shammo said. CEO Ivan Seidenberg said that unlimted plans will not go away - the company would see what its customers find "fair" and go from there, whatever that means.

Honestly, I find this news troubling - since wireless services are requiring an ever increasing amount of bandwidth and also faster data speeds. What this means is data costs for consumers are likely to skyrocket. I don't see how this is in any way good for us at all. It more seems as a method to dig deeper into our pockets and leaving us little choice other than to go along with it.

I'm hoping this isn't a trend in the industry - but knowing the way the carriers operate, it probably will be.